From now until the start of the Philadelphia Live Arts & Philly Fringe Festival, we’ll be interviewing some of the talented artists who’ll be performing at this year’s event. Our first profile is of South Philly’s Charlotte Ford, who can be seen in “Flesh and Blood and Fish and Fowl.” According to the show’s official description, it “blends stop-action animation with antique illusion to invoke a primordial world of fecund crones and giant rats where humans are the hunted and taxidermied animals are the hunters.” Now that’s a scary mouthful!

Charlotte was kind enough to take time out of her busy schedule to answer a couple of questions for us.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I’m a Philadelphia-based theatre artist. I went to Bryn Mawr college, which is how I ended up in Philly (my family moved around a lot, all over the US, so I’m not really from anywhere). A few years later I got my MFA from the London International School of Performing Arts, an off-shoot of the Jacques Lecoq School in Paris. I’m interested in collaborative physical theatre–that is, not script-based work, but theatre created from scratch, from collaborative improvisation and a lot of editing. I love writing as much as performing. This fall I’ll work with 1812 Productions for the first time on a piece called “Cherry Bomb,” written by Jen Childs, about the Cherry Sisters, notoriously “the worst act in vaudeville.”

I received the Leeway Art and Change grant this year to study advanced clown in Boulder, CO with world-renowned clown teacher Giovanni Fusetti, and then teach clown at Girard College where I’m an artist-in-residence. I live on the southern frontier of South Philly with my partner, Geoff Sobelle, with whom I’m creating “Flesh and Blood and Fish and Fowl.” I love creating darkly humorous theatre that explores human frailty through character–think Todd Solondz and Christopher Guest. I love fully transforming into physically specific characters.

Why did you choose West Philly for your show?

Originally, we were going to perform “Flesh and Blood and Fish and Fowl” at Mum Puppet Theatre in Old City. But unfortunately, Mum Puppet theatre unexpectedly disbanded and the theatre will probably become a condominium. We were scrambling for a space at the last minute, and the Live Arts Festival offered an abandoned Rite Aid in West Philly. We changed from a tiny 25 by 20-foot (roughly–I forget the exact dimensions) black box square to a 7,000 square foot pharmacy. We radically changed the set design and now are roller-skating down the old aisles of Rite Aid during breaks. Rite Aid seemed like a tragic turn of events and now is quite integral to the show.

Flesh and Blood and Fish and Fowl